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Catastrophe Denied. A Critique of Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming Theory. The Case For Global Warming. How do greenhouse gasses work? How do models arrive at catastrophic temperature forecasts? Links between warming and other climate changes. How Does Man Create CO 2 ?. A Hydrocarbon.
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Catastrophe Denied A Critique of Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming Theory
The Case For Global Warming • How do greenhouse gasses work? • How do models arrive at catastrophic temperature forecasts? • Links between warming and other climate changes
How Does Man Create CO2? A Hydrocarbon Water (H2O) + Carbon Dioxide (CO2) + Heat + Oxygen (O2) It is the same basic process whether in a power plant furnace or in the human body
How Does Man Create CO2? A Hydrocarbon Water (H2O) + Carbon Dioxide (CO2) + Heat + Oxygen (O2) • Traditional pollutants were much easier to eliminate • Pollutants like sulfates (SOx) reduced by reducing impurities in the fuel and by scrubbing exhaust gasses • Pollutants like ozone, carbon monoxide, NOx reduced by better combustion • Pollutants like carbon and ash reduced by filtration The only way to prevent carbon dioxide in emissions is not to burn fossil fuels - it is fundamental to combustion
4. More CO2 Absorbs More Radiation, But There is A Diminishing Return
5. CO2 Re-Radiates the Heat, Some of Which Warms the Earth’s Surface
Getting a Feel For Parts per Million • Current CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is about 385 ppm • Riddle: When flying from Los Angeles to New York, if you have traveled the equivalent of 385 ppm of the entire trip, where would your airplane be?
Getting a Feel For Parts per Million • Current CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is about 385 ppm • Riddle: When flying from Los Angeles to New York, if you have traveled the equivalent of 385 ppm of the entire trip, where would your airplane be? • Answer: Less than halfway down the runway at LAX. • Man is thought to have increased CO2 from about 270 to 385 ppm. That is a 0.011% change in the mix of atmospheric gasses
∆T = F(C2) – F(C1) Where F(c) = Ln(1+1.2c+0.005c2+0.0000014c3) Likely CO2 Range by 2100
One Degree? We Must Be Missing Something. • The Answer is Feedback • Catastrophic forecasts assume that positive feedbacks multiply the warming by 3-8x • Example positive feedback assumptions of high-warming models • Increase in atmospheric water content (relative humidity constant with rising temps = more H2O) • Increase high cirrus clouds • Decrease in albedo from melting ice • Increase in methane releases from northern tundra • Release of CO2 from warmer oceans • High enough feedback leads to tipping points and runaway processes
Feedback Multiplies or Reduces An Initial Disturbance Positive Feedback Negative Feedback • Disturbances are amplified • System may end up far from its starting point • Disturbances are damped • System remains near its starting point, though it can oscillate
Positive Feedback Example50% Positive Feedback Fraction Initial Input There is some initial perturbation to the system, such as a temperature change First Feedback The system adds to the initial perturbation, in this example by 50% of the initial input 2nd But now the system will add even more, equal to 50% of the first feedback 3rd Etc... Final Value is 1/(1-f) times Initial Input, so Final Value is double the Initial Input when f=50%
One Degree? We Must Be Missing Something. • The Answer is Feedback • Catastrophic forecasts assume that positive feedbacks multiply the warming by 3-8x • Example positive feedback assumptions of high-warming models • Increase in atmospheric water content (relative humidity constant with rising temps = more H2O) • Increase in methane releases from northern tundra • Increase high cirrus clouds • Decrease in albedo from melting ice • Release of CO2 from warmer oceans • High enough feedback leads to tipping points and runaway processes
Catastrophic Global Warming Theory Based on Two Chained Theories From Climate Positive Feedback Theory From Greenhouse Gas Theory
Rising Temperatures Lead to Other Negative Climate Changes • Changing precipitation patterns (more drought in some areas, more rain in others) • Melting ice and rising sea levels • Species extinctions • Increase hurricanes, tornadoes, and severe storms • Migration of tropic diseases to new areas
Five Key Climate Questions • Is the world warming? • Is that warming due to man’s CO2? • Will future man-made warming be substantial? • Will we see catastrophic effects from warming? • Do CO2 abatement laws like cap-and-trade make sense?
Historic Temperature Record Shows Warming of About 0.6C Orange line is a centered 60 month moving average Lighter blue = switch to satellite data Source: Hadley CRUT3, UAH
Where's The Acceleration?Temperatures Have Been Flat for a Decade Source: Hadley CRUT, UAH
Tucson Had Most Warming Since 1900(According the USHCN Weather Station Data)
USHCN Weather Station SurveyTucson, AZ Official weather station in a parking lot! I wonder what this looked like in 1900? Survey archived at www.WeatherStations.org
We Found Consistently Bad Siting Around Arizona Surveys archived at www.WeatherStations.org
Measuring the Phoenix Urban Heat Island 5 to 10 Degrees F Meyer, 2008
Urban Growth Biases Temperatures UpwardsHalf or More of Measured Temperature Increases May Be Due to Urban Biases 1950-2000 California Temperature Change, Celsius Source: LaDochy, 2007
Five Key Climate Questions • Is the world warming? • Yes, but historic record likely overstated, and there has been no warming in last 10-15 years • Is that warming due to man’s CO2? • Will future man-made warming be substantial? • Will we see catastrophic effects from warming? • Do CO2 abatement laws like cap-and-trade make sense?
The Existence of Warming from the Greenhouse Effect is “Settled Science” The Legitimate Question is, “How Much?”
Early Ice Core Studies Seemed to Have Found the Smoking Gun CO2 appeared to be a strong driver of global temperatures… Source: IPCC AR4
Early IPCC Reports Found Current Temperatures to be Unexceptionable Reconstructed temperature anomaly Source: IPCC, 1990 AR1
Mann’s Hockey Stick Purported to Show Recent Warming as Unprecedented
“Novel” Statistical Methods Mann 1998 – Simple mean of 415 proxy series Mann 1998 – Published results McIntyre & McKitrick, 2006
A Few Proxy Series (<5% of the total) Drive the Result • Multiple studies, but they are not independent • Same researchers, same reviewers • Different proxies at the margin, but all use a core of 2-3 proxies know to drive hockey stick results • McIntyre & McKitrick (2005) showed the Mann methodology used and re-used by these studies • Creates hockey sticks from random noise • Seeks out and overweights HS shaped proxy series • High-Altitude southwest US bristlecone pines were for years the “secret sauce” to make hockey sticks • Questionable proxy – are we measuring rainfall, temperature, or CO2 fertilization? • Many modern anthropogenic factors • Proxies used by Mann and others have not been replicated by more recent work (Ababneh 2007)
“Hide the Decline” Trick #1: Overlay data from an entirely different source (in red) to make the hockey stick appear steeper Trick #2: Truncate proxy data that does not support the desired conclusion • The blue, green, and pink lines are proxy reconstructions • The red line is the instrumental record from the Hadley CRUT3 database Chart via the Mail Online, 12/13/2009
Flipping Proxies Upside DownTiljander Sediments Example Warmer Year More Organic Matter in Sediment Lower X-ray Density Mann 2008 (and others) Used the Proxy Upside-Down to Show Hockey Stick Warming Original Proxy Findings Sediments Disturbed by Agriculture (e.g. proxy meaningless in this period) Medieval Warm Period
Excluding Tiljander Sediments and SW Pines Changes the Entire Answer Mann 2008 Long-Term Proxy Average Mann 2008 Long-Term Proxy Average Excluding Tiljander & Southwest Pines Eschenbach, 2008
Proxy Studies Without These Questionable Series Take Us Back to the Traditional View Loehle, 2007 Moberg, 2005 Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, and Temperatures Today That Are Not Unprecedented
Comparing the Medieval Warm Period to Today Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
Current Lead Argument:Warming Caused By Man Because We Can’t Think of Anything Else It Could Be Per Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT: What was done, was to take a large number of models that could not reasonably simulate known patterns of natural behavior (such as ENSO, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation), claim that such models nonetheless accurately depicted natural internal climate variability, and use the fact that these models could not replicate the warming episode from the mid seventies through the mid nineties, to argue that forcing was necessary and that the forcing must have been due to man. (Lindzen)
IPCC Models Say Nature Would Have Cooled Without Man with man without man IPCC AR4 8.1 Figure 1
Climate Alarmists Claim 1970-2000 Temperature Rise Must Be Due to Man IPCC Claims This Rise Unexplainable by Anything But CO2 Source: Hadley CRUT3, UAH
Two 51-Year Periods: Which Is Man, And Which is Mother Nature? One Period is 1895-1946 (“nature”) and the other Period is 1957-2008 (supposedly “Anthropogenic”) Both time and temperature scales are the same between graphs
Omitted: Land Use Changes Affect Temperatures Deg C Per Decade from Land Use Characteristics, 1979-2003 Fall, S., D. Niyogi, A. Gluhovsky, R. A. Pielke Sr., E. Kalnay, and G. Rochon, 2009